Sunday, January 7, 2007

Le Pen gets cocky

National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen has had several good months. He has seen his pubic support, which polled only around 10% last election, plateau at a solid 15%, and has likely watched with amusemant the current internal battles on the right. And according to an article in The Times, he's even turning a bit cocky.

"They tell me I’m a bit like a doctor prospering from the illnesses of his patients,” said Le Pen at his home on a hill overlooking Paris. “The greater the crisis, the more people come to me. And the crisis is very great at the moment."

"But people will always prefer the original to the copy. I have been giving warnings for several decades. They called me an extremist. But I was right all along. People know that. That is why they will vote for me."

The article also has a comic tidbit chronicling Le Pen's age and experience.

And the two main presidential rivals of Le Pen were presenting themselves as “young political virgins” when he was the only genuine anti-establishment figure. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, he noted, had worked as a minister under President François Mitterrand. “She did not just emerge from Jupiter’s thigh,” he chuckled, referring to a myth describing the birth of Bacchus, the god of wine.